


Drive

by warriorpoet



Category: Breaking Bad
Genre: Gen, References to Canonical Character Death, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-21
Updated: 2013-12-21
Packaged: 2018-01-05 09:23:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1092262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/warriorpoet/pseuds/warriorpoet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How Jesse's attempts to engage Mike in conversation eventually paid off. Set at various points from ABQ to Felina.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Drive

**Author's Note:**

  * For [brampersandon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/brampersandon/gifts).



Jesse would never forget the day he met Mike. He couldn't really remember it, at least not the finer details, the little things that didn't quite bore their way into his numb brain, his broken heart. But he couldn't forget it.

It had been the worst day of his life, up till that point. Way fucking worse days since, which made that one kind of slip from his grasp, purposefully forced out, maybe, or just shoved into some dark corner at the back of his brain that would only be forced open by some great impact. A bullet, or years of headshrinkers. Either way. Whatever.

He remembered what Mike said first: "Saul Goodman sent me." Like that said it all, like that meant shit could be okay. It wasn't, but it _could_ be.

He couldn't remember what Mike had done, couldn't picture him methodically moving through the apartment, noting every visible trace of criminality, packing it up and taking it for safekeeping. He couldn't remember Mike hitting him, just the ringing in his ears afterward, the dull throbbing of his jaw. 

"You're in the home stretch," Mike had said.

He wasn't.

*

Fishtailing through the desert roads, Gus Fring in the rear view mirror, slumped in the back seat, mouth slack, eyelids at half mast.

"Mike!" Jesse shouted.

"Just drive, kid," Mike said.

"Where are we going? Am I going the right way? You gotta – yo, stay awake, all right? I don't know where the fuck I'm going here, okay – I need – you gotta stay awake – "

"Drive!"

*

"You gonna let me drive? Like, ever?" Jesse sighed and leaned his head against the passenger window for about the hundredth time in the last minute. The glass was hot from the midday sun. It felt like it was burning a little hole right through his skull. 

Die of boredom or die like an ant under a magnifying glass in Mike's shitty fucking car that needed to conserve the AC or some shit. Either way. Whatever.

"No."

"How come? I can at least help somehow, can't I? You must be getting tired."

"No. You wouldn't have the slightest idea where we're going."

"You could tell me."

"No."

Jesse sighed again. "Just offering, is all."

Minutes and miles went by. He couldn't tell how many. It might have been more like two seconds or something. There was nothing to do. He couldn't even count cars or trees or anything because there was just _nothing_.

He tapped his fingers against the packet of smokes in his pocket. God, he wanted one so bad. He started humming to try to take his mind off it.

The movement of Mike's head turning to glare at him caught Jesse's attention. He fell still for a millisecond. Then he sighed again.

"So, you got, like, a family? Anyone who's proud of your line of work?"

"You mean like the Pinkmans sending out their Christmas letter? Season's greeting everyone. Jacob got straight As and made the mathlete team this year. And our dear Jesse has graduated from pushing shake-n-bake meth on street corners to working in a real professional operation. He committed his first murder this year. It's taken a long time, but we're finally so proud of our first born."

Jesse stared at him, wide-eyed and open mouthed.

Mike's face was perfectly blank until he glanced over and his mouth twitched into a satisfied flash of a quarter-smile. "Yeah. I know everything about you, Pinkman. I know your family, I know where they live, I know your school report cards, I know your rap sheet. I know the last time you took a shit and the last thing you jerked off to."

He tried to swallow. His mouth was dry, like he'd eaten every grain of sand in New Mexico. "But, what, I don't get to know anything about you?" he croaked. "So we can have a conversation and shit?"

"I know everything about you, and there's nothing there I'm interested in making small talk about."

Jesse fell silent, his head burned by the window glass again. He picked at a hangnail and stayed quiet as Mike drove on and on to the next pickup.

*

Just keep going straight, Mike had said. There was a little field hospital in a warehouse. Gus had thought of everything.

Gus was fading away. He'd fumbled for his cell phone and pressed a few numbers, said something in Spanish between labored breaths. Then he just drifted off.

Jesse tried to look at the road and then to the passenger seat. Road. Mike. Back in the rear view and Gus looked fucking dead already.

"Mike..." he said, his voice shaking.

"You got this, kid."

"Stay awake, man, come on... I don't know what the fuck I'm doing here."

"Keep your head on," Mike huffed through gritted teeth, fading fast. 

"I didn't even fucking see that guy before he shot you... Jesus. What was that shit they drank?"

The only sound was the roar of the engine. 

Jesse stepped on the gas, but his foot was already to the floor.

He saw it. The warehouse. He leaned on the horn, beating it with a desperate fist. His palms were sweaty. The wheel slipped. The car was going too fast, and not fast enough.

"Mike! Mike, we're here!"

"You did well today," Mike huffed.

"Just hold on, okay? Okay?"

Jesse slammed the brakes and turned the wheel.

Mike was silent.

*

Jesse was quiet as he pushed apple pie around his plate, not quite wanting to be done yet. When he was done, Mike would drop him back at the laundry and he'd have to get in his car and go home to his empty, quiet house and do who the hell knows what to stop him from hearing Gale's pleading voice in his head when he tried to sleep.

"Have you thought of an exit strategy?" Mike asked out of nowhere.

"Huh?"

"I don't imagine you want to be in this line of work your whole life."

Jesse shrugged. "It's good enough for you."

"I haven't always done this. I used to be a stand-up citizen."

Mike talking about anything even remotely personal _never_ happened. Jesse perked up. 

"Seriously?"

"Don't look so surprised," Mike said dryly.

"No, it's just... I don't know, I can't picture you as anything else. Like, in my mind you were born as an old dude with a gun in his hand," Jesse smirked. 

Mike sighed heavily. "I used to be a cop."

"What happened?"

"That's a long story for another day. My point is, if I were you, coming from your background, starting out as a good kid with your nice upper middle-class family in the suburbs, I'd be getting in young, making my money, setting myself up for the rest of my life, and getting the hell out as fast as I could. Unless you want to end up dead or in prison, which, frankly, I don't think you'd take kindly to."

Jesse was quiet, spooning crust and whipped cream into his mouth.

"So, my question is, have you considered an exit strategy?"

"What? You want me out of town so Gus can get rid of Mr. White?" 

"I didn't say that. I'm saying you should be prepared in case things don't work out. And I assure you, Jesse, there will come a time when things don't work out."

Shit hadn't really been working out that well so far. Jesse wasn't sure how it could get worse. He watched the lights of passing traffic on Central, looking past his own reflection in the window. He didn't want to start considering exactly how it could get worse.

"Anyway. Finish up your pie, kid, we have to be going."

Jesse's head snapped back to him. "We got a night job?"

"No, not tonight. I do, however, have other places to be."

He pushed his plate away and hoped that maybe Mike was still in the mood for sharing. "Like where?"

Mike sighed as he stood up from the booth. "It's my granddaughter's birthday tomorrow. I have to pick up her gift."

"Seriously?" Jesse hopped up, scooping one last fingerful of whipped cream into his mouth as he went. "You're all full of surprises tonight, huh? How old is she?"

Mike fixed him with that look that meant he was getting beyond his usual baseline of fed up. "Too young for you, thank God."

"Hey, that's not why I'm asking, man. I'm curious. That's how people have conversations, you know. Asking questions? Exchanging information? Shit like that?"

Mike held the door open for him. "If you must know, she'll be turning ten."

"Right on. See? That wasn't so hard, was it?"

"Shut up and get in."

Jesse slammed the door of Mike's Fifth Avenue and smiled to himself as Mike started the car.

*

"Yo, why don't you just let me drive?" Jesse snapped for maybe the fourth time in the last hour. 

Mr. White was going bugfuck over the cameras in the lab, and, yeah, they needed to get to Mike to fix it, but what they didn't need was getting picked up by the cops or dying in a stupid car wreck before they could do it.

Mr. White ignored him, like he had the last three times.

Jesse rolled his eyes, then jumped when his phone buzzed in his pocket.

"It's him. It's him," he said, fumbling to flip it open.

"Well, _answer_ it," Mr. White snapped.

"What the hell do you think I'm doing?" Jesse shouted back, and dropped his voice back to normal when he answered the phone. "Yeah?"

"What the _fuck_ happened?" Mike's static-crackled voice barked at him.

"Yo, Mike, just chill, alright – "

"Shut up, Jesse, and tell me _exactly_ what Walter did."

"That's not important right now. We got bigger problems. We need to know – "

"I'm coming back now."

"We're on our way down to meet – hello? Mike? Mike, you still there?"

Jesse snapped the phone closed. "Yeah, he's pissed."

"You didn't ask him about the recordings?" Mr. White asked.

"Did you hear me ask him? I didn't get a chance." They were on a dirt road now, dust clouding everywhere around them. He thought about that whole exit strategy thing Mike had talked about once, and found himself wishing he'd paid more attention. This was shit getting worse.

"How can you be so sure you can keep him from killing us?" Mr. White said.

"Because he's not gonna kill me. And I'm not gonna let him kill you. Worked up 'till now, right?"

"There's no operation to protect anymore. Gus is gone."

"He's not gonna kill me," Jesse said again.

Mr. White swerved as something darted in front of them, a coyote or a chupacabra or something. They missed it, but the tires spun and dirt kicked up all over the windows and Jesse grabbed on to the hand hold above the passenger window with a white-knuckled fist.

*

Jesse chewed his thumbnail and blankly stared across the room at the poster of a fly.

"Remember when I talked to you about an exit strategy?" Mike said.

"Yeah."

"Now's the time to think."

Jesse frowned, wiped his wet, chewed up fingers on his jeans. "Five million is pretty much exit enough for me. What? You think this might not work?"

"I'm confident your partner is going to be glad to be rid of me. You, on the other hand... do what doesn't come naturally and think like a boy scout. Be prepared."

"Like... how?"

"Get a passport under a different name. Get a couple of them. Put it with some cash somewhere easy to access. Somewhere safe, where people won't be looking for you. A locker at the bus station. The trunk of a car in long-term parking at the airport. A self-storage unit. It lets you get out of town quickly and keeps you on your feet if the cops or anyone else starts looking for you."

Jesse was quiet, thinking it over, when the rumble of the roller door sounded.

"He's here," Jesse said, unnecessarily, but he had to say something.

*

Jesse watched the roller door go down and Mr. White disappeared from view. Head, shoulders, torso, he turned away and the door dropped down and obscured him from view.

Jesse huffed and kicked a loose rock across the asphalt. So, Mike was gone and Mr. White was freezing him out. That whole exit strategy bag thing had paid off for Mike. Maybe it wasn't such a bad idea.

He found some dudes who made fake ID's and they kicked him up to some dudes they knew who could do a fake passport. With Mr. White stiffing him on the five million, it took a good chunk of the cash he had left, but he figured if he ended up staying in town it'd be because he got arrested and then it wouldn't matter.

He rented a storage unit using his new passport, filled out the forms with his DOB and someone else's name. He paid up front for twelve months and set a duffel bag in the middle of the locker. If he never got back to it, then he figured someone would get a nice surprise when it was auctioned off. Fifty grand of drug money, a fake passport and a fake Texas drivers' license. It'd make a cool episode of Storage Wars, that was for sure.

He went home, and he waited for the other shoe to drop and hit him square in the face. Then Saul told him about how Mike's guys had been hit in prison, and he started thinking that maybe when Mr. White said that Mike was gone, he meant he was _gone_ , gone – like, dead gone – and instead of waiting for the cops to show up he was waiting for Mr. White to come and take him out too, and he thought about the bag in the storage locker and then he tried to forget about it, because it hadn't helped Mike at all so what good would it really do him.

He stayed.

*

He went.

He screamed, his foot pressing the gas pedal to the floor.

The gate smashed in front of him, and he drove.

Todd was dead. Jack was dead. Kenny and Frankie and Lester were dead. Mr. White might be dead by now too.

Jesse was alive.

He was shaking so hard, the El Camino's engine and his own hysterical laughter roaring in his ears. He couldn't think straight. But he knew where to go.

The key he'd had on him, the one with his house key and his car key, was long gone. He couldn't remember if it would've been left at Schrader's house, or if Todd would've taken it off him, or if it might even have fallen out of his pocket when they dragged him out from under Mr. White's car. It was gone.

So he had to get the spare.

That could be a problem.

He was focused but it kind of felt like someone else was piloting his body, moving controls inside him that kept him shifting gears, clutching the wheel, leaning on the brake, circling the block around his house like Mike had taught him how to tell if you were being tailed, if someone was watching you.

It was clear, so he pulled up and ducked through the long grass. He broke a window and lifted himself in. The house looked intact. Dusty, abandoned, freaky as shit, but intact. He was surprised that at the very least Badger and Skinny hadn't broken in and lifted his TV and sound system.

He pulled the key from where he'd taped it under the kitchen sink all those months ago and walked out of his house, leaving the door open and not looking back.

It was still dark when he got to the storage place. He found a black ski mask on the floor of the passenger seat of Todd's car and though it made him sick to think what he might have used it for, he pulled it on when he saw the security cameras. 

He parked a block away and pulled the mask on, trying to walk as fast as he could. It was like his bones and muscles had fused into the short step of the shackles. He got there, though, and remembered his locker had been number 069, how he'd laughed at that but been glad 'cause it was easy to remember.

The bag was still there, right in the middle of the floor. 

He grabbed it and broke into a stiff, limping run, and when he got back to the car he ripped off the mask and pulled open the zipper and saw fat stacks staring back at him.

Jesse laughed again, breathless and giddy, and picked up the passport and flipped through it, looked at the picture on the license that, judging by the quick look of himself he'd taken in the rearview, didn't really look like him anymore. It'd do, though.

He hit the gas and gunned it out of there, thinking about getting across state lines as fast as he could, thinking about a hotel room with a bed and a shower, thinking about clean clothes, thinking about maybe a bus station or an airport, thinking where he could go now. Thinking how things weren't okay, but they could be.

He heard Mike's voice in his head, talking to him from that day he couldn't really remember but wouldn't ever forget.

 _You're in the home stretch_.

He was.


End file.
